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Tiger I
The Tiger I '''(its official designation being '''Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf. E) was a German heavy tank, and one of the most famous and well-known armoured vehicles of all time. A bit of history The Tiger's development began before the war, in 1937, as the Wehrmacht acknowledged that there would be the need for a heavy tank suitable for breakthroughs; however, work on prototypes that didn't prove completely satisfactory continued till summer 1941, when Operation Barbarossa began. Meeting the then-formidable Soviet tanks like the T-34 or the KV-1 (especially the latter, with armor that could only be reliably penetrated by the FlaK 18 88 mm gun) led to an urgent need of tanks better armoured and with better firepower. Both the Henschel and the Porsche firms submitted prototypes, both of which shared a Krupp turret on different hulls; the Henschel prototype proved superior to the mechanically unreliable and sluggish Porsche prototype, and therefore was accepted for production as the Tiger tank. It began to roll out of the production lines in August 1942, and production ceased in August 1944 in favour of the superior Tiger II, after 1'355 were built. The Tiger (weighing some 50 metric tonnes) was almost twice as large as the earlier Panzer IV. Although it featured very thick armour (reaching up to a maximum of 200 mm around the gun's mantlet) and a big and powerful gun (an 88 mm gun which is widely believed to be a variant of the FlaK 18, yet actually was a parallel design), it was by no means particularly slow, thanks to its powerful Maybach engine. To support such a massive weight, a torsion-bar suspension with the wheels arranged in a peculiar Schachtellaufwerk (overlapping) design was adopted, with very wide tracks to reduce ground pressure. While powerful and very resilient, the Tiger was also a quite troublesome tank : its weight meant that it was unable to use most bridges, the turret traverse was slow, and, although better than its failed Porsche counterpart, it suffered from reliability problems throughout its career; Tiger units rarely completed a road march without having some tanks suffering breakdowns. The tracks and road wheels ensemble proved difficult to maintain, especially in harsh climate conditions (being very sensible to mud and ice), and recovery on the battlefield was also quite problematic. More importantly, as the war dragged on, its price (in money and resources) was very high, costing as much as four times than the effective StuG III. Despite this, and despite the fact that the first tanks were rushed to the frontline too early (near Leningrad, on September 1942), the Tiger soon rose to prominence on all the battlefields it went to. Usually employed in separate heavy tank batallions, it proved both impenetrable to almost all the Allied's weapons at anything other than point-blank range (only improved guns like the OQF 17-Pounder, the M3 90 mm and the D25-T managing to reliably defeat its frontal armor), and capable of destroying all the enemy's tanks at extreme ranges (there are reports of Tigers knocking out enemy tanks at distances up to 4 km or 2.5 miles, thanks to its excellent optical sights). Tanks that made up the backbone of the Allies' armoured forces (like the M4 Sherman or the T-34) often had to resort to flanking tactics to overcome such enemies, and always with the prospects of losing some, if not most of their own forces. Other info Kuromorimine employs some Tiger I tanks, of which one is Maho's own command tank (when Miho was still part of that school she used a Tiger herself). Maho's tank could be considered the chronological "final boss" of the series, though it's not technically the strongest tank, which would be the Maus. With only one tank in Ooarai's arsenal with comparable weaponry and protection (that being the Tiger (P)), the Tigers' technical advantage was largely offset by Ooarai's use of daring and unconventional tactics, and their superior maneuverability; thus, they were unable to take advantage of their superior armament, although their protection served them well. During the last showdown between the two Nishizumi sisters, the Panzer IV superior mobility enabled it to use a last-ditch tactic to drift up to the Tiger's rear, its only vulnerable point, and defeat it with a point-blank shot. Tank basic characteristics Kuromorimine has many standard Tiger I tanks. *'Armament' #'Main Gun : 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 #Other : 2x 7.92 mm MG 34 *'Hull armor / Turret armor' #'Front : 100 mm / 110 mm #Sides : 80 mm / 80 mm #Rear : 80 mm / 80 mm *'Speed' : 38 km/h (24 mp/h) on road More about Tiger I *Tiger I *Tiger I specifications *Tiger I in the official anime (japanese) Category:Tanks